


someone like you

by fonulyn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, Only One Bed, Pining, accidental cuddles, altho it does seem onesided, and there are a lot of feelings, but I don't think it worked out that well :'D, but i tried!, i tried to be angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28716012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fonulyn/pseuds/fonulyn
Summary: That’s when Joe realizes there’s something …off about the room. He didn’t expect it, so it takes his brain a moment to register what it is, but eventually he processes the fact that there’s only one bed. “Nicky,” he starts, slowly, “are you sure we are in the correct room?”“What?” Nicky frowns. “Of course I am. Are you really so hung up on the colors, I’m—Oh.”For a second they stand there, staring at the bed. Then Nicky makes an awkward little shrug. “It’s okay, I’ll just sleep on the—” He trails off as he looks at the couch in the corner of the room. It’s so short he couldn’t even sleep on it if he curled up as tightly as humanly possible, and he finishes with a sigh. “Floor.”--Or the one wherein there is only one bed. Maybe not entirely by accident.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 30
Kudos: 193
Collections: All and More (18+) Kaysanova Gift Bag 2020





	someone like you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serinah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serinah/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [Serinah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serinah/pseuds/Serinah) in the [All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/All_and_More_Gift_Bag_2020) collection. 



> okay so I was really drawn to the "only one bed but one of them orchestrated it" prompt, so this is my attempt at it :D 
> 
> i hope you like it!

Joe kind of wants to sleep for a week. 

It’s ridiculous, he knows that, but he’s been stretched so thin for the past few weeks at work that he suspects no amount of rest will ever be enough for him to feel even remotely normal again. He’d pulled three all-nighters this week alone, trying to ensure that he really would get the project to the point that he could spend the weekend on a different continent attending a friend’s wedding. He loves Nile like a sister, he really does, but he’s tired enough to grumble under his breath about stupid wedding locations and stupid intercontinental flights. 

The only thing that makes Joe feel better right now is the way Nicky is trying to hide a smile, pretending that he’s not about to laugh at the colorful insults Joe has directed to, well, everything from the too-slow elevator to the garishly colored carpet in the hotel lobby. Outwardly, to everyone else, he’s been perfectly polite but ever since he realized his half-mumbled commentary seemed to amuse Nicky, he’d kept it up, as a means to lift both their spirits. 

“Oh, _great_ ,” Joe says as he swings the door to their room open, and the first thing he’s confronted with is how overwhelmingly _green_ the room is, “someone put the Hulk in a blender.”

Nicky snorts out a laugh, shouldering Joe out of the way so he can close the door behind them. “I’m sorry for choosing a room that insults your creative eye,” he says, more teasing than genuinely apologetic. “It was, however, the cheapest option. I thought that’s why we agreed we’d share a room in the first place.”

A tiny part of Joe is still kind of stuck on Nicky’s laugh, the way his eyes had crinkled in the corners, but he’s well-versed in ignoring it. He’s known ever since he was twenty that making Nicky laugh could very well be one of his great goals in life. Coincidentally, he’d been nurturing a doomed, ridiculous crush ever since, too. At least he’s so used to it that he manages a level reply. “After a whole night of staring at this, I might need extensive surgery on my eyes.”

“Oh,” Nicky says, even tilts his head as he blinks innocently. “I was under the impression that you slept with your eyes closed.”

Joe doesn’t even try to hold back his laughter. He spins around, stepping forward to drop his bag on his bed, and that’s when he realizes there’s something …off about the room. He didn’t expect it, so it takes his brain a moment to register what it is, but eventually he processes the fact that there’s only one bed. “Nicky,” he starts, slowly, “are you sure we are in the correct room?”

“What?” Nicky frowns. “Of course I am. Are you really so hung up on the colors, I’m—Oh.” 

For a second they stand there, staring at the bed. Then Nicky makes an awkward little shrug. “It’s okay, I’ll just sleep on the—” He trails off as he looks at the couch in the corner of the room. It’s so short he couldn’t even sleep on it if he curled up as tightly as humanly possible, and he finishes with a sigh. “Floor.” 

“No!” Joe protests, before he even thinks about it. And as he does think about it, he still agrees with his original reaction and firmly adds. “Absolutely not.” 

“It’s okay, Joe,” Nicky tries, “I booked the room, it’s my fault that—”

“Nicky,” Joe cuts in. “We’ve known each other for what? Fifteen years? We can share a bed.” Outwardly he’s entirely calm. Inwardly he’s close to panic. His heart is thrumming dangerously close to his throat, his palms clammy and his mind running a million miles a minute. A part of him feels like this is going to be his undoing, that there’s no way he can continue hiding how helplessly in love he’s been for over a decade. Yet another part keeps cooing in his ear, telling him it’ll be _fine_ , it’ll be alright, you can do it, it’s nothing. So he finds himself looking expectantly at Nicky, asking “If it’s okay with you?”

Nicky gives him the softest of smiles, one that makes Joe’s heart constrict in his chest, and it’s settled.

*

They’re both so exhausted after the flight that they fall into bed after nine pm, carefully arranging themselves so that they each have half of the bed and they don’t need to invade each other’s space too much. The bed is big enough, and Joe claims the spot next to the wall since he knows he sleeps deeper, he’s the one who will need to snooze his alarm ten times in the morning while Nicky rises with the sun.

Usually Joe is one of those people who fall asleep the second their head hits the pillow. He insists he’s not tired at all, and he honestly might not even _feel_ tired, but once he settles down and closes his eyes it takes maybe ten seconds before he sleeps. Now though? He stays as still as he possibly can, stiff as a board, staring up at the ceiling. He tries to ignore the warmth of another body next to his own, tries to ignore the fact that it’s _Nicky_ , and instead of relaxing into sleep he feels tenser and more awake than ever.

He thinks about the first time they met, when Nicky had been awkward at almost sixteen, had gone through a growth spurt and didn’t really know what to do with his long limbs yet. Joe had written him off as just the new neighbor, but for some reason his mother decided that the new neighbors were also their new best friends, and well. Joe should’ve known his mother always knows best. It didn’t take him long to realize Nicky wasn’t shy or silent, but only took his time observing before letting his sharp wit out. 

Joe smiles into the darkness as he thinks about the way he passionately explained to Nicky the artistic merits of Sin City only to finally notice the small grin and how Nicky was one hundred percent pulling his leg, egging him on, instead of actually as dense as he pretended to be. 

Somehow it turned into something else, eventually. Joe doesn’t know when. He can pinpoint the _second_ he knew Nicky would be his new best friend. He has no idea when he fell helplessly in love with him. He was twenty-five when it sank in, when he realized that the warmth filling his heart at the mere thought of Nicky wasn’t the same kind of warmth that he felt for the rest of his friends and family. 

The soft memories turn sour when his mind skips, unbidden, to the one and only time he tried to ask Nicky out. Tried to actually confess his feelings to him. 

It was gentle, the way Nicky turned him down. Told him he was his _best friend_ , with such emphasis that it was impossible to misinterpret.

So here they are: Joe shifting restlessly, and only by some miracle not waking Nicky up with it. Eventually Joe settles on his side, watches Nicky as much as he can in the darkness. There’s only a dim glow of the streetlights through the gap in the curtains, but Joe tracks the line of Nicky’s nose with his eyes anyway, marvels in the way his lashes fan over his skin. It’s like a knife in the gut, pushed deep and twisted, that he’s this close but can’t get any closer. Not in the way he wants to.

Somehow after two, three hours of torturing himself with the what-ifs Joe finally dozes off.

*

The first thing Joe’s brain registers is the comforting, familiar scent he’s surrounded by, and he presses his face closer to the source of it. He nuzzles his nose against warm skin, inhales as deep as he can, a content smile spreading on his lips. He has an arm around Nicky, and he uses that to pull him even more tightly against himself, reveling in the way their bodies slot close so easily. Joe could swear he has never felt this comfortable in his entire life, even with the way heat is pooling in his gut. He shifts his hips, rubs himself against the swell of Nicky’s ass, and Nicky shifts—

 _Nicky_.

The realization is like a bucket full of icy cold water down his neck and it’s a miracle he somehow manages not to jump backwards. He can’t even try to get away as he’s the one with his back to the wall, and Nicky is pressed so close against him, back to his chest, that he’s effectively trapped. Thankfully his hard-on is going down, wilted by the shock, and slowly, carefully, he unhooks his arm from around Nicky. His heart is beating so loud he’s certain it’s already enough to wake the dead, damnit. 

There’s maybe twenty seconds during which he hopes that he didn’t just wake Nicky up. He tries to stay as still as he can, barely even breathes, but then Nicky shifts and the sleepy “Joe?” shatters all of Joe’s hopes that he might’ve gotten away with what he just did. He lets out the breath he’d been holding, allows his eyes to slip shut. 

“I’m sorry,” Joe blurts out. It’s a testament to how sleepy he still is, how his brain isn’t entirely online yet, that he doesn’t have a better filter than this. “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t want to, I mean, I’m—” He takes a deep breath, willing the panic inside of him to settle down. He’ll probably feel silly in the morning when he thinks back to his freakout, but right now it seems like he’s ruined just about everything. 

So Joe squeezes his eyes shut, and finishes in a small voice. “I’ll just sleep on the couch, okay.” He can’t get up though, not with how he’d need to climb over Nicky to get out of bed, and he isn’t really willing to risk any kind of physical contact right now.

Instead of moving away, as Joe fully expected, Nicky only shifts to turn around properly. He still stays close, even closer than the small bed would force him to, and blinks up at Joe. “What are you talking about?” he says and frowns, confused. “Why would you do that?”

Bottom drops off Joe’s stomach and he stutters a little, desperate to find his words. When he eventually manages, his voice is no louder than before, uncharacteristically unsure. “Please don’t make me spell it out for you.”

“Joe,” Nicky says, unintentionally sending a shiver down Joe’s spine. He reaches out, and for a second it looks like he’s going to brush his fingers down Joe’s cheek, but he changes his mind at the last second and instead places a warm palm on Joe’s shoulder instead. “I don’t understand.”

It feels like a cruel thing to say but the thing is, Joe knows Nicky and Nicky isn’t cruel. He’s about the furthest thing from that, with his kind heart and unwavering will to do the right thing. Even when he’d broken Joe’s heart all those years ago he had been unbearably kind about it. So Joe sighs and resigns himself to his fate. “I thought I could do this but I can’t. I can’t be this close to you and _not_ get to hold you,” he confesses in a whisper, utterly terrified. How he finds the courage to go on, no one knows. “My feelings haven’t changed, but I know you don’t feel the same, and I respect that, I—”

“ _Joe_ ,” Nicky says again, more firmly this time, and it cuts Joe off effectively. He’s frowning, looking even more confused than before, as if the words hadn’t really explained anything at all. “What are you talking about?”

There’s something about those eyes, something about the way Nicky is looking at him, that makes Joe’s resolve crumble and he blurts out “I’m _still_ in love with you.”

“ _Still_?” Nicky echoes. Joe only makes a frustrated sound and it prompts Nicky to continue. “Since when?”

 _Since wh_ —Joe can do nothing but stare, his eyes wide, mouth slightly open. This conversation isn’t going even nearly like he imagined it would. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks, before his brain catches up with his mouth. It hurts thinking back to his botched confession, to how he’d opened his heart to Nicky and gotten the infamous _you’ll always be my best friend_ in return. Yet he does it, rips off the bandaid now that the damage is already done. “I told you I loved you almost eight years ago, and you told me you wanted to be friends.”

“No you didn’t,” Nicky argues. To his credit, he looks genuinely confused, still. “Joe. I would remember.”

Joe resigns himself to going through the horror again and explains. “It was when we celebrated Booker’s birthday without him,” he says, knowing that’s enough explanation. They threw a party for their friend, who had somehow managed to miss the whole thing and forgot to come. It was a lovely evening regardless, and after watching Nicky smile for the nth time that night Joe simply lost all self control and confessed. “I told you I loved you.”

Nicky opens his mouth, then closes it again, shaking his head a little. “I don’t. I didn’t. I…” He pauses and huffs, mostly at his own inability to form words right now, if Joe knows him at all. “How was I supposed to know that you meant you _love_ love me?” Nicky finally gets out, and at Joe’s indignant squawk he quickly goes on. “You tell me you love me when I bring you homemade bread. Or when you haven’t seen me for a few weeks. Or when I eat the beetroots off your plate so you don’t need to.”

For the longest second, Joe only stares at Nicky. Until he manages a highly intelligent “Oh.”

Nicky raises his eyebrows at him, that familiar hint of a smile curving his lips as he repeats with emphasis. “Yeah. _Oh_.” 

It’s only now that Joe realizes that what he thought was a clear confession that couldn’t be misinterpreted might not have been as clear as he’d assumed. He does express his affection very easily with words, towards friends and family. So how was Nicky supposed to know that this particular time was any different from all of the others? Joe certainly hadn’t elaborated. The second Nicky had told him he was his best friend he’d panicked and backtracked, played along and brushed it off. 

He was so terrified of being let down that he made sure he would be.

The way Nicky is looking at him with such unending gentleness makes Joe’s heart swell and somehow he finds the courage to speak up this time. “Well, I do. _Love_ love you.” His heartbeat picks up the second he says the words, and he holds his breath, waiting for the verdict.

Nicky hums. “Good.”

That’s it, that’s all he says, and Joe waits for a moment before he lets out the breath he’d been holding and grunts disapprovingly. “You’re supposed to say something back.” He’s calming down already, though. There’s no way that Nicky is going to turn him down, not with the way he’s looking at him right now, like he’s the one who hung the moon and sprinkled the stars across the sky. Looks at him like no one else has ever looked at Joe.

Slowly Nicky brings his hand up and brushes his fingers over Joe’s cheek, trails the line of his brow and lets his touch linger. Carefully he then brushes his fingers into Joe’s curls, the gentle pressure of the touch against Joe’s scalp making him melt. And when Nicky finally speaks it’s in the tone so typical for him, the no-nonsense way he states everything like they’re well-known facts. “I’ve loved you ever since you turned twenty and I was a gangly teenager making heart-eyes at you.”

Joe means to ask him if he can kiss him. He means to be respectful and gentlemanly, and make sure he’s not crossing any boundaries even on accident. Yet somehow he leans in before his higher brain functions give the green light, and Nicky is right there to meet him halfway. Nicky’s lips are soft and warm, and they’re both smiling so that it doesn’t exactly get any deeper, stays as a chaste brush of lips on lips.

When they pull apart, they’re both smiling even more widely, and Joe’s heart does a silly little skip in his chest. It still feels like a dream, and Joe has to discreetly pinch his own thigh to make sure he’s actually awake and his subconscious mind isn’t making this up. “I’m going to kiss you again,” he says, not even a question, before he leans in. His hand is on Nicky’s jaw, cradling his face as he deepens the contact, and who makes the happy little sigh into the kiss neither of them knows. 

They get so lost in the moment that before either one of them notices Nicky has already pushed Joe back and slotted a leg between his, practically blanketing him as the kisses slowly turn shallower, lazier, eventually returning to mere brushes of lips. Joe can’t hold back the bubbling laughter, then, as if all the joy needs a way out somehow. “Who knew all we needed was you botching a hotel reservation?”

Nicky stills, and even in the poor light it’s obvious he’s avoiding Joe’s eyes. “Well,” he begins, slow and measured, before he seems to make up his mind and looks straight at Joe again. “I have something to confess.” There’s a hint of a blush dusted over his face, but the corners of his mouth are curving up. “I specifically asked for one bed.”

“You—” Joe’s eyes widen, before he’s laughing again, shaking his head in disbelief. “You sneaky little shit.” It sounds more like a compliment than anything, really, even a touch impressed. 

“So you’re not mad?” Nicky asks, although he’s already relaxing again, the tension melting away.

“No,” Joe answers without even needing to think about it. Easily he slips a hand underneath Nicky’s stretched t-shirt, splaying his palm wide over his back. The touch is enough to pull a shiver from Nicky, who instinctively shifts a little, bringing their faces back close. “Why would I be?” Joe whispers right against Nicky’s mouth.

Then he kisses him again.

**Author's Note:**

> am also [on tumblr](https://fonulyn.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
